With private agencies barred from recruiting nurses for jobs abroad, only 10% of the earlier numbers are getting placements overseas. Earlier, about 30,000 nurses used to seek jobs overseas, mainly in the Gulf, annually. With the slump, the nurses are forced to accept the low wages in the domestic health sector, which makes it difficult for them to pay off their educational loans.
Between the two government agencies in the State, the Overseas Development and Employment Promotion Consultants (ODEPC) and the public sector undertaking NoRKA-ROOTS, only about 2,500 nurses have found jobs abroad in the past two years. The Union government had banned private agencies from recruiting nurses for such jobs in 2015 after large-scale fraud in the process came to light.
NoRKA and ODEPC officials are hopeful of better figures in the current financial year with clients getting familiarised with the new system. Saudi Arabia recruits the most, but the most preferred destination is Dubai, said chief executive officer of NoRKA K.N. Raghavan.
Over 1,500 vacancies had been notified through ODEPC, according to its managing director Shameem Ahmed. There are 37 clients, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Ireland, and the UK, from where enquiries had come in, he said.
An advantage
The biggest advantage in recruitment through government agencies is that the nurses incur an expense of only ₹20,000. In certain cases, the clients provide funds to the government agencies to find qualified hands. In such cases, nurses do not have to pay even the cost of migration.
However, the government machinery is too inadequate to cater to the large numbers of nurses who wish to go abroad, say nurses. Private agencies are actively recruiting through Dubai. Nurses arrive at the UAE on tourist visa and attend interviews scheduled by clients in certain countries which are yet to accept the new norms. But, these recruitments materialise only upon paying ₹15 lakh to ₹25 lakh to the agencies as processing fee. Nurses’ experience in corporate hospitals is also a parameter in the selection, said an official connected to the recruitment agencies.
